


Daytime Soap

by caixa



Series: Real Love [3]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Comfort, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Friendship/Love, Infidelity, Injury Recovery, Lovers to Friends, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Real Madrid CF, Sequel, Team Dynamics, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 15:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10744599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caixa/pseuds/caixa
Summary: A study of pining adulterous dangerously friendly exes, late spring 2017.Training day,  Valdebebas, gym, showers, dressing room.A sequel to Dream Talk Night Day and Miss U Honey.





	Daytime Soap

**Author's Note:**

  * For [k7ng](https://archiveofourown.org/users/k7ng/gifts).



> Theme songs, back to back and on repeat:  
> Love will tear us apart / Joy Division  
> Never tear us apart / INXS
> 
> This is a work of fiction.
> 
> -

 

Gareth is silent at the gym. He minds his own business, his own recovery exercises, avoids the eyes of his teammates, looks mostly down.

There aren’t too many others right now. He’s not in sync with the rest of the team anyway, the majority of them are outside on the green field finishing their training and those who have done some workout at the gym have done it before that. Pepe is doing his own workout, chatting quietly with the trainer, far in the other end of the vast space.

Gareth hears distant chatter, shouts and laughs echoing in the hallway way behind him. The training is over, people returning to the locker room and showers.

Pepe leaves, greeting Gareth on his way past him with a slap on his shoulder. The touch feels nice, a gesture that says “I see you, you’re one of us”.

Gareth paces on his treadmill, glances out the window on his side. A lone figure in purple and black kicks a ball towards the goal over a row of yellow plastic men, jogs slowly to fetch the ball from the back of the net, places it on the ground, pauses, kicks, jogs again. Familiar strong sloped shoulders; thigh and leg and foot moving precisely, powerfully, every muscle and joint working in the right place, right time, right direction.

Gareth doesn’t lose the rhythm of his pacing for a second but his mind wanders. Longing breezes through him like a sudden sharp blow of cool wind. It’s such a long time he’s been able to contribute his part to that magic and he misses it.

 

Cristiano chooses the other door to come inside, Gareth spots him in the other end of the gym when he’s doing his cooling down cycle. Cristiano looks like he’s only going to pass through on his way to the showers but when he sees Gareth, he nods his head as a greeting with a friendly smile.

Gareth’s treadmill stops at the end of his program, he steps down, wipes the handles on the spots he’s touched and approaches Cris. They meet in the middle. Cristiano’s hand lands lightly on his shoulder, the same spot as Pepe’s, but it’s not a pat or a slap, it stays there, a light but steady grip pulls him warmly closer for a greeting, kisses on each cheek. Cristiano is sweaty from the exercise but smells of traces of his new cologne underneath and around that, it’s nice and right and just as it should be.

Gareth should be just as sweaty from just as heavy exercise but he isn’t, won’t be for days, maybe weeks, once again and it’s wrong. It’s wrong for him, wrong for the team, wrong for their supporters and his club paycheck.

“Can you help me with the weights?” Cristiano asks. Gareth is quite certain Cris wasn’t going to do weights at this part of the day, but he accepts the excuse to spend time together with gratitude.

Cristiano chooses the weights, Gareth helps adjusting the plates; Cristiano places himself on the bench and Gareth helps him lower the bar to his chest and secure it back up when Cris is through. They don’t really talk during his short pause, just trace each other’s faces with their eyes, lips curving and eyes wrinkling to small, lingering smiles every now and then, like rippling wavelets rising and descending on the surface of water on a peaceful summer day.

 

They do stretches together. Gareth is amused by the ballet stretches Cristiano tells he has copied from Gio.

“It’s refreshing. Fun to try something different for a change”, he says.

When Cris reaches to the front of him with straight back over wide spread legs, Gareth’s mouth twitches and he stands up.

“Sorry, Cris, I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t check this out”, Gareth says as he goes round to Cristiano’s back, to look at the perfect taut spheres of his buttocks and the muscled lean thighs shooting each to their own direction from the spread ass.

“Bendy”, Gareth says slowly when he walks round the other leg back to the front. Cristiano catches a glimpse of his face: Gareth smiles showing a part of his teeth and raises his eyebrows as he descends down on the mat.

“Tease”, Cris murmurs low to his face.

“You’re the one doing that”, Gareth replies, never evading Cris’ eyes and tries Cristiano’s stretch.

“Careful, b’-“, Cris warns quickly, and cuts his word in the middle even quicker, “don’t overstretch your calf.”

The unsaid word hangs in the air between them, bouncing back and forth like a lost balloon.

_I almost called him babe and we both know it._

_He almost called me babe and we both know it._

Would Cris stop him, Gareth wonders, if he leaned closer now, or got on his hands and knees and crawled closer, fitted their lips together and kissed him, a real kiss, deepening and heating up until they surrender to it and collapse on the soft foam mat together, rolling each in turn on top of the other, touching and grinding and undulating, letting low deep growls and sighs.

Nothing is over. Everything, no, _the_ thing, their thing, is charged in a fucked up way. They’re so finished. No, unfinished.

 

Gareth hits the showers first but when Cristiano comes in and chooses a stall, he is unable to leave. He dawdles in the humid room with a towel around his waist, sits down on a tiled bench, lifts one foot on the other knee and fritters with a soaked band-aid around his toe, rips it off in pieces, picks the glue off his skin.

He steals glances at showering Cristiano. It’s amazing how slim and streamlined he’s got in a matter of months. Sometimes Gareth wonders if Cris likes his lean and tight mirror image, does he miss all those massive bulky bumps he spent years building and has just as carefully melted away?

The body is no less powerful and attractive, quite the contrary. It works like magic and looks delicious. It’s the same as with Cristiano’s hair: it’s always changing but always perfect, beautiful. The free-flowing curls with some blonde highlights Cris is sporting nowadays take Gareth back, it’s almost the same hair Cristiano had when they played for the Super Cup in Cardiff.

It was a million years from today. Gareth wonders if he ever gets to play for Real Madrid in his home town again.

In retrospect Gareth recognizes how attracted he was to Cristiano even back then, how the feeling was more than he took it for, more than admiration and joy of being accepted as a valuable teammate, more than a starry-eyed football crush. It was a real crush, a prelude to falling in love.

Cristiano shampoos and rinses, it smells of an expensive hair salon, the kind Gareth loves to pick up Emma from after she has had her hair done.

He always comes in time, sits on a sofa with the girls, and Alba always says “Mummy, you look like a queen!” because Gareth has secretly taught his little princess to say so. Emma always beams at her, radiates happiness to the clearest dark brown eyes that look sincerely up to her. Gareth stands up, and she looks questioningly up at him, and Gareth always looks her up and down and around, from head to toe, around the newly done hair, returns to her eyes and smiles an intimate smile and whispers “wow” so silently it nearly has to be read from his lips.

Sometimes he makes an effort. Sometimes it’s no effort at all.

People can love in so many ways. Sometimes he’s okay with it. Other times it still tears him apart.

 

Cristiano soaps himself and the shower gel has the smell of his cologne. Gareth stares shamelessly at the foam dripping down his skin.

“Come here”, Gareth says when he goes to grab a towel. “Let me dry your hair.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I’ll rub your shoulders.”

“I’m getting a massage today.”

Gareth gives Cristiano a long, pleading look.

“I just want to hold you”, he says finally, “Please.”

Cristiano wraps a towel around his waist, takes another in his hand and walks slowly over to Gareth. A long, heavy sigh accompanies his wet footsteps, a wordless way to express the doubt of anything good resulting from this.

Gareth turns on the bench to make room for Cristiano between his legs. He has the other foot lifted on the bench, knee bent to the side, the other one rests on the floor. Cris hands the towel to Gareth and sits in the space; Gareth covers Cristiano’s head with the towel and squeezes his dripping locks gently with it, like he would do to a child after bath.

Cristiano leans back to his chest, absorbs the feel of fingers massaging his scalp through the plush terry towel.

Gareth goes on for a while. Then he pulls the damp towel out from between them, crosses his arms across Cristiano’s chest and leans his cheek to his hair.

“You mess my hair”, Cristiano says.

“I already did”, Gareth answers.

He rubs his cheek and chin harder to Cristiano’s scalp, temple and cheekbone, brushes and scratches him with his beard. He stops and caresses the side of Cristiano’s face.

“You’re a miracle, Cristiano. You age backwards”, he says.

Cristiano chuckles.

“Are you on painkillers?” he asks and tilts his face up to look at Gareth.

Gareth thinks about the things he wants to say, the things that are about to burst out from his lips but he can’t let them.

_I’m lost without you._

_Do you think I fuck everything up because we’re not together? You handle it so much better._

_I miss you so much I’m hurting._

He smiles instead and shakes his head. “No. I’m sober and you’re amazing.”

Cristiano turns around on the bench. He is on his knees, leans to his fists on the hard tiles near Gareth’s thighs and kisses his lips. Gareth cups his head with one hand, tilts his head slightly for an angle that fits their mouths together and joins in the kiss, guiding Cristiano’s lips apart with his own, keeps it slow, soft and gentle, holding back a bit all the time.

Watch it. This is already a step too far.

 

The door swings open mixing the drier and cooler air-conditioned locker room air to the steam in the shower room.

“Yuuck, put it away! Nobody wants to see that”, Lucas Vázquez’s voice exclaims.

Cristiano pulls back. Gareth is relieved and exhilarated to see there’s a smile on Cristiano’s lips, it’s completely shameless and mischievous, not a bit embarrassed. _Why should it be, we’ve been worse_ , he thinks and the memory sends dangerously pleasant tingles down his spine.

“Daddies kissing. Gross”, Lucas scolds and shakes his head, making small grunts of disapproval as he turns on the shower, extending his hand to test the temperature of the water.

Somehow it’s come to this, Gareth notices amused, their teammates have collectively progressed from enabling their not-too-subtle cuddling to guarding their chastity. To his knowledge it’s never been talked over or negotiated, it just comes from within. Whatever it is: team spirit, joint chivalry, swarm intelligence.

 

In the locker room Gareth brushes Cristiano’s forearm with the back of his hand before turning to his spot to search for fresh underwear, a hair band (he constantly loses them in the shower and wonders if the floor drains are often blocked with piles of little black elastic bands and his hair) and his clothes.

“Thanks”, he says.

“For what?”

Gareth shrugs lopsidedly, with one shoulder. “Being there. The stretches. Everything.”

“Any time.”

They’re almost parting when Gareth straightens his back like remembering something. “Cris”, he says.

Cristiano turns back to him; Gareth sounds suddenly so serious. “Yes, Gareth?”

“You sounded happy when you said her name. I liked it. I wish you’ll stay that way.”

Cristiano takes a step back Gareth’s direction to draw him to a one-arm hug.

“You’re sweet”, he says.

“She’s a babe”, Gareth says smiling shyly, like afraid he’s overstepping a boundary saying so. “I hope you love her. I hope you hold on to it.”

Cristiano studies Gareth’s eyes tentatively. “Do you wish it for your own protection?”

Gareth shakes his head. “No, I don’t”, he says. “But she’s met your son. People shouldn’t just walk in and out of a child’s life.” He looks at Cristiano, a bit of nervousness mixes in his serious eyes and he starts backing down. “Sorry, I know it’s none of my business. You know what you’re doing”, he says apologetically.

Cristiano draws him to another hug, a long, tight embrace. “Oh Gareth”, he says. “Never say you’re sorry when you know you’re right.”

He backs to an arm’s length and looks Gareth in the eye, hands cupping the Welshman’s shoulders. “I promise I’ll try my best, okay?”

Gareth smiles.

“That’s not a little, Cris”, he says, “Your best, I mean. It’s the best of the best.”

The pun is lame but it’ll do.

It’s the truth, anyway, Gareth thinks and starts tweaking his hair to a tight bun.

 

 

 

_I was standing_  
_You were there_  
_Two worlds collided_  
_And they could never ever tear us apart_

 - Michael Hutchence, Andrew Farriss

 

_Is it something so good_  
_Just can’t function no more?_  
_When love, love will tear us apart again_

  - Ian Curtis, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Bernard Sumner

 

**Author's Note:**

> My view of Georgina shifts almost daily but I chose to be optimistic and believe for the benefit of the story.
> 
> Thank you for reading!  
> Please share your thoughts. All comments and kudos touch my heart and lead me on my path.


End file.
